BDO can assist with the following data analytics services:

• CAATS. CAATS refers to the use of Computer-Assisted Audit Techniques while performing audits or providing business intelligence. CAATS are used in all forms of audits - including financial audits, internal audits and IT audits - as well as in data mining to provide management with relevant business intelligence. As business processes are increasingly being driven by computers and information technology, using computer-assisted audit techniques over traditional audit methods is becoming the norm. The use of these techniques can greatly assist in increasing the efficiency of audits and increasing the range of what is tested.Business processes covered, among other, are: business-specific transactions relevant to a client’s industry; journal entries; accounts payable; accounts receivable; inventory; fixed assets; HR, payroll etc.

   

• Data analytics. Data analysis is the process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming and modelling data to test systems, transactions and the integrity of data. BDO uses data analysis techniques to analyse large volumes of data, while looking for anomalies, patterns and exceptions. This allows for a complete coverage of all transactions. From data analysis and data mining, reports are built to provide management with new decision making tools and identification of new opportunities, resulting in competitive advantage.

• Continuous Control Auditing / Monitoring. As an auditor you are looking for ways to continuously auditing business controls – incl. processes, transactions and data. If you are part of management, you would like to exercise your risk and control management duties by having the finger on the proverbial pulse 24/7. Regardless your role, you are constantly looking for ways to add more value to your client (if you are the auditor) or the business (if you are part of management), while reducing the cost of delivery. Our continuous control auditing / monitoring analytics help you achieve this by automating aspects of a business process that are repetitive, freeing up your limited time to focus on higher value activities that require expert interpretation. By automating data analytics, organisations can timeously identify ineffective controls. By adding interactive visualisations and real time dashboard functionality, you can further enhance your ability to communicate the insights generated.

• Revenue Assurance (Recognition). The levying of service charges is dependent on the use of good quality data. BDO’s revenue assurance analytics helps organisations (e.g. telecommunication companies) to identify and remedy revenue leakages caused by poor controls. Our revenue reconciliation model imports records from collaborating systems like Point of Sale (POS) systems and invoices from the general ledger (GL). These are aggregated and then compared against each other to determine the proportion that match correctly and identify the mismatched, missing, and spurious exceptions.

• Cash Conversion Analytics. Cash can be either a constraint or a driver of growth. Cash tied up in slow moving products or customers that do not pay timeously can impede growth or even lead to business failure. BDO’s cash conversion analytics help you speed up the movement of cash through the business by helping you understand:

   

  • Which products customers want?
  • What inputs you need to produce those products and in what quantities?
  • Which suppliers provide those inputs at the best value in terms of quality, price and payment terms?
  • Who are your best paying customers and what products do they buy?

• Business Performance Insights. Businesses struggle with obtaining a cross-silo view of the firm. Additionally, business functions can make decisions that benefit their own objectives without taking into consideration how the entire system is impacted. This can lead to business decisions that appear optimised but that are in fact sub-optimal from a holistic organisation perspective. Our business performance insights combine data from the supply chain, operations, sales, and human resources functions to help you identify the cross-functional drivers of business performance. Displayed in an intuitive and graphical manner, these insights will enable to make business-wide decisions with confidence.

• Forecasting. Businesses typically forecast future performance using historical accounting data. However, accounting data seldom possesses the level of granularity required to perform robust forecasting. BDO’s forecasting analytics make use of detailed information generated by the various business processes to forecast performance. Additionally, the forecasting process includes scenario testing that will enable you to visualise the impact on your business - should low probability events occur (e.g. black swans).

• Forensic Analytics. The perpetration of fraud is one of the major challenges that faces private and public sector entities. Various methods exist for the identification of potential fraud, one of which is data analytics. We use pattern analysis to identify suspicious transactions, narrowing down the amount of manual analysis and investigative work that the forensic team needs to perform.

• Advance Analytics. Advanced data analytics can help drive innovative business decision making. Advanced analytics and reporting use sophisticated tools for data mining, big data and predictive analytics to mine data for important trends, patterns, and performance. As the amount of valuable data any company gathers increases, so will the need to use that data for insights that provide a competitive advantage.

• Data mining. The process is the discovery, through large data sets, of patterns, relationships and insights that guide our clients in measuring and managing where they are and predicting where they will be in the future.

• Predictive analytics. Predictive analytics is the process of using data analytics to make predictions (based on data). Our process uses data along with analysis, statistics, and machine learning techniques to create a predictive model for forecasting future events.

• Data conversion and system data interface reviews. Data conversion is the translation of data into a new and different format. CAATS are commonly used to test data conversions when a new system is implemented and where data is transferred from one system to another. These tests are done to ensure the integrity of data is maintained once it is converted and transferred into another system or database.

   

• IT due diligence reviews. CAATS are also increasingly being performed in due diligence reviews and company valuations. Analysis of data and the use of business intelligence provide a great deal of information to investigations and valuations. In many cases CAATS allow for a more in depth and complete view of an organisation, especially when 100% of the data is analysed.